Here's a precursor from Ninifaye's "If life gives you lemons, pack them up in your suitcase and make a nice cake when home."  From the University of Maryland's Terra Mariae yearbook, 1908.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

 

They say that everything is connected, and here's how strawberries are (for starters).  From Goblin Market by Christina Georgina Rossetti and illustrated by L. Housman, 1893.

Here's a precious secret of immortality: train a peach tree to spell "Davie," and you'll not only live forever but also enjoy luscious peaches.  This we learn in The Peach and Nectarine by David Taylor Fish, 1879.  But note in the text that only immortality is guaranteed, and the peaches are a mere "perhaps."

"Portraits of lemons," from The Oxford Thackeray.

We say that "apples and oranges" can't be expressed as a ratio, and that's because mathematics is citrus-based and prejudiced against apples.  Note that "tangerine" and "tangent" share the same Latin source, "tangere" ("touching"); "satsumas" and "summations" are derived from the Latin "summa" ("highest"); "lemons" and "lemniscates" both come from the ancient Greek island of Lemnos.  It's worth pondering ("ponder" has the same Latin root as the Ponderosa lemon ["weigh"]) just how Ugli the citrus bias is, my little Clementine.

Here's a precursor to James and the Giant Peach, from The Child World by Gabriel Setoun, 1896.

We laud so many discoverers, but the discoverer of grapes surely deserves rhapsodies.  From Our Country by Benson John Lossing, 1875.

"The New-York Anti-Orange-Peel and Banana-Skin Association, as they appear in their great humanitarian feat of clearing the side-walks."  From Punchinello, April 9, 1870.  [Via literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.]  [Notice all those hyphens in the caption.  Under a microscope, each hyphen is, in turn, a miniature orange peel and banana skin.]

Here's a precursor to James and the Giant Peach, from The Oxford Thackeray.

Here's a precursor to how "some states inflate their books to make themselves look better" (Democracy and Leadership by Eric Thomas Weber, 2013), from Western Wilds and the Men Who Redeem Them by John Hanson Beadle, 1878.

A precursor to the Death By Lemon cake recipe.  An illustration from an 1879 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from a 1902 issue of Punch magazine.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

A surrealist illustration from a 1906 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.  The caption reads: "The great sphere I recognized after closer scrutiny as an orange."

Over a century before Motown "heard it through the grapevine," climbing and trailing plants of the vine family actually kept secrets instead of spreading them.  The caption of this illustration makes it all clear: "Dear ivy, keep my secret safe; / Like him, you cannot guess / That life and love are centered here, / Where I have written—Yes!" (London Society, 1877).

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: